The present invention relates to data processing and information retrieval, and more specifically, to organizing information on a network and responding to search inquiries related to that information on the network.
Today, more and more users are accessing the web using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. These devices are designed to be mobile and hence have a smaller screen than non-mobile devices such as traditional desktops and laptops. In response to this, web developers are designing mobile versions of their website which are designed to be viewed on smaller screens. When users enter web addresses into mobile browsers of mobile devices or attempt to retrieve websites identified as part of search results from a web engine, web servers responding to the browsers detect that mobile devices are attempting to retrieve web pages and automatically redirect the users to mobile versions of the web pages even though the users may prefer in some cases the non-mobile version of the web page containing more desired information in an unabridged format.
Indeed, issues may often arise when mobile devices are automatically redirected to mobile versions of web pages when performing web searches. For example, in most cases, to allow for the smaller screen, a portion of the content may need to be removed from a non-mobile version of a web page to create the mobile version of the web page. While the removed content may be considered less important to some users, other users of the mobile devices may want to view this data. Some approaches are currently available to ensure mobile device users have access to content within non-mobile versions of web pages. One approach involves providing links on the mobile versions of web pages to the non-mobile web pages. However, often these links bring users to non-mobile versions of home pages of the website, rather than to the non-mobile versions of the specific web page the users were seeking as part of a web search query to access. Another approach involves changing metadata that mobile browsers present to web servers to automatically direct mobile device users to non-mobile versions of web pages rather than the mobile versions. However, experience indicates most users prefer the mobile version of the website and only infrequently desire access to non-mobile versions of web pages. What is needed is a new approach to obtain desired web content for a mobile device available on mobile and non-mobile versions of web pages when performing web searches.